Figuring Out the Stuff Between the Beginning and the End

A Reboot I Can Get On Board With

I find it’s easy to complain about the reboots and remakes that Hollywood keeps churning out these days. It’s easy to say that the creators out there just can’t think of anything new to write about, and so the studios just have them dip their pens back in the wells of franchises that have proven to be successful in the past. So why wouldn’t they succeed today? Easy money, right?

I get it. I really do.

I’ll admit, I’m more okay with a reboot or a continuation of something old than I am with a straight up remake. For example, I did not like the live action Beauty and the Beast remake. Don’t get me wrong, I love Emma Watson. But I didn’t like how her songs sounded so auto-tuned. And as good as the original animated film was, I just found that a remake was unnecessary.

On the other hand, I did enjoy the live action The Jungle Book. I felt like it was different enough from the original animated version that it felt like a different movie.

And maybe as I’m thinking of continuing a story years later, I’m using the word “reboot” incorrectly. I guess a reboot would be like when they made The Amazing Spider-Man only a few years after the last Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie. Or when Warner Bros. released Man of Steel instead of a sequel to Superman Returns. Those are reboots…

I guess I’m just thinking of standard sequels. But they’re sequels to movies that came out a long time ago that continue the original story. These are hit or miss. For every The Force Awakens or Creed you probably have two Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls or Men in Black IIIs. But here are some ideas I could get behind…

(Note: I haven’t actually heard that any of these are in development, so if they are, point me toward news about them so I can keep up with when these movies and/or TV shows are coming out.)

Quantum LeapI brought this one up about a year ago. They’re rebooting TV series left and right: Roseanne (or The Connors thanks to a certain star’s Twitter remarks), Murphy Brown, The X-Files… Where is the Quantum Leap reboot? (I know… I’m still saying reboot when I already admitted that I’m not using it correctly. Deal with it.) Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing how I’d go about continuing that story all these years later, click here and see what that’s all about.

The Mighty Ducks
There’s a special nostalgic place in my heart for The Mighty Ducks. I’d like to say that happens a lot with underdog stories. But when it comes to these team sports movies that seemed to be popular in the 90s, this is the only franchise I really latched onto. And I’m not even a big hockey fan. But I didn’t care for Little Giants. I didn’t care about The Big Green. But I would love to hear them say, “Quack… Quack… Quack…” on the big screen again.

Here’s how I see it happening. Charlie (Joshua Jackson) comes back home to Minnesota after hearing that Hans has passed away and has left the skate shop to Charlie in his will. Charlie gets nostalgic upon seeing old news clippings hanging on the walls of the shop and soon finds out that pee-wee hockey’s district 5 is without a coach. Charlie volunteers to take a new group of ragtag ne’er-do-wells under his wing (get it?) and teaches them soft hands, the Flying V, and the rest of what it means to be a Mighty Duck.

The Goonies
I know, this is one that’s been rumored to be in development for decades. I even saw once that Josh Brolin told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show that he’d be willing to do the sequel if one ever saw the light of day. Have Mikey (Sean Astin), Brand (Brolin), Mouth (Corey Feldman), and the rest of the Goonies come back as adults to pass the torch to the next generation. But be careful to do it right, not like when Indiana Jones attempted to do the same thing with “Mutt” Williams in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Buffy the Vampire SlayerNow, it’s possible that this is already in development. I read and even responded to an article several months ago saying that Joss Whedon was on board with a Buffy reboot that would see the main character recast as an African-American actress. As I stated in my initial post about this very thing, I would have no problem with a series that focused on a black teenage girl who just happened to be this generation’s Slayer. I would have a problem with calling her Buffy.

I said it before, there’s already been a Buffy. And in the original series, Whedon and his team of writers built this incredible world where vampires and demons are constantly on the move and every generation requires a Slayer who will be called to put a stop to their rampant evil. Why retread what’s been done? Sunnydale was turned into a crater at the end of the original series. Let’s call a new Slayer and find out where Buffy’s world is 16 or more years after the hellmouth closed up shop.

I know there’s been a comic book series that continued after the TV show wrapped up. I read some of the Season 8 comics, but I honestly don’t know where the story has gone. Is there still an army of Slayers? Are we back to a Chosen One (or Two, if we still include Faith)? Are the Scoobies still active? Was a Watchers’ Council ever re-formed after their destruction at the hands of the First? These are all questions that could be easily answered in a new series that picks up more than a decade after the fact.

Okay… That’s four franchises to work with. What do you say, Hollywood? Feeling creative? Can you come up with new adventures for some old favorites without just taking the easy route and recasting and rebooting to retell the exact same story all over again?

How about you? What franchises from the past would you like to see get a makeover? Let me know in the comments!

I agree. When they went away from the common man to someone famous I thought they jumped the shark. The story was all about Sam becoming just a normal guy caught up in his life and trying to deal with it. They were not world wide famous.